The Supreme Court on Monday appointed two Special Courts to deal with offenses associated with the coal block allocation matters pending since 2014.
A three-judge bench of Chief Justice S.A. Bobde, Justice A.S. Bopanna, and Justice V. Ramasubramanian appointed judicial officers Arun Bhardwaj and Sanjay Bansal as special judges for Special Courts 1 and 2 in order of their seniority.
Earlier, Special Judge Bharat Parashar was conducting trials in some 40 coal scam cases and has been replaced by two judges after the top court recently took note of a letter from the Delhi High Court‘s Registrar General that permission be granted to nominate or post another suitable presiding judicial officer as special judge in place of Parashar.
Now, the Apex Court has replaced Parashar with two special judges keeping in consideration the suggestion made by Senior Advocate R.S. Cheema.
The Supreme Court had requested Chief Justice, Delhi High Court to provide the names of five judges to replace Special Judge Bharat Parashar. Later, the Supreme Court bench considered the five names provided by the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court and made its choice.
In August 2014, the Supreme Court had quashed 214 of the 218 coal block allocations the Central Government had allocated between 1993 and 2010. A three-judge bench headed by then CJI R.M. Lodha had canceled the allocations calling them arbitrary, illegal, and amounting to unfair distribution of national wealth.